page_title: List of unidentified decedents in the United States
section_title: Cuyahoga County John Doe
hierarchical_section_title: List of unidentified decedents in the United States / Ohio / Cuyahoga County John Doe
caption_attribution_description: English: 1981 Euclid Ohio John Doe
context_page_description: An unidentified decedent, or UID, is a deceased person whose legal identity is unable to be determined by law enforcement. Although the majority of individuals are identified soon after their bodies are recovered, it is not uncommon for bodies to remain unidentified for years or even decades. There are approximately 40,000 unidentified decedents in the United States at any given time.
  A deceased body can be identified in several different ways. Most commonly, a relative of the deceased identifies the body by sight. However, if a body is decomposed, skeletal, or unrecognizable due to severe facial trauma at the time of recovery, other methods must be used. Some common modes of identification include fingerprint comparison, dental records, chest x-rays and comparing the deceased's DNA to the DNA sequence of relatives such as a parent or sibling. Since identification of a deceased individual is a legal matter, officials require a high degree of certainty in order to make a formal identification.
context_section_description: A man was pronounced dead approximately four minutes after he fell from a cliff in Euclid, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on May 8, 1981. The exact cause of his death was determined to have been trauma to the chest. The man had been seen alive by a trio of men who stated he had claimed to have traveled to the states of New York, New Jersey, Ohio and California, the latter state he had planned to travel to as soon as he could come upon the means to fund his transportation. They also stated he had used cocaine and alcohol and bore the first name "Joe". His hair and eyes were brown, and he was five feet seven inches tall and weighed 146 pounds. His clothing consisted of a jacket, a sweatshirt, a wool sweater, a T-shirt, a hat, a belt, two pairs of socks and a pair of brown boots. His age was believed to be between twenty and thirty and he carried various personal items, including cologne and suntan oil.
caption: Cuyahoga County John Doe
exif: {"Image Artist": "Owner", "Image ExifOffset": "2128", "Image XPAuthor": "Owner", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}